Wistia is hiring a

Software Engineer

Cambridge, United States

Every minute, people watch over four days of video hosted by Wistia. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to make this happen. What started eight years ago as a meager Rails app on a single shared hosting box is now many services running on hundreds of machines.

We’re looking for engineers who are excited to solve hard problems in a team environment. To do this effectively, you'll need to understand how our systems work and think creatively about how we can improve them.

You'll be great at this job if you’re excited about learning, thrilled by tough challenges, and unafraid to ask for help when you hit a wall. We work as a team and we're always eager to improve, so we look for people who are curious, questioning and collaborative.

Improving our video encoding so that videos are ready to watch ASAP and look super crisp!

Measuring, monitoring, and debugging large, distributed systems.

Making video so smooth, intuitive, and seamless that customers forget they're using a third party product to host it!

We value people who can work across the full stack. We are currently using Ruby on Rails and React/Redux on our core product. Knowledge of best practices in this stack is a definite plus, but we are more interested in good software fundamentals than knowing a specific tech stack.

Here are some qualities we look for in Wistia engineers, and why we feel they're so important:

You are curious and enjoy learning. We’re constantly faced with the unknown at Wistia. How do we create an analytics tracking system for 360 video? How do we scale the data store for it? What does it mean for that system to be reliable, and how can we measure and achieve that?

You are a collaborator. Whether through pair programming, a whiteboard session, or a casual lunch conversation, collaboration helps the best ideas and practices to proliferate.

You have strong communication skills. Each of us has only part of the overall picture in our head at a given time. Explaining ideas at an understandable level of abstraction is critical to achieving a shared vision.

You're empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Sometimes things don't go smoothly. A customer gets frustrated, or a coworker does something that bothers you. Understanding where others are coming from, and being in control of and deliberate about how you respond to them, empowers you to solve problems while also being supportive of and sensitive to those around you.

You write clean and understandable code. We write code for each other and for our future selves. Code that is clear and tested sets us up for speed, reliability, and a more enjoyable development experience.

You know your fundamentals. Fads and frameworks come and go. We’re less worried that you know the Next Hot Thing™ than that you feel comfortable with the underlying data structures, algorithms, languages, and protocols that make web applications work.

You are comfortable thinking in trade offs. Some decisions will always have a downside. Do we want our distributed database to be more consistent, or more available? Should we use a hosted product that will save us time now, but force us to move to a new system in a year? These are regular conversations!

You think for yourself and you're willing to speak up. We hire people because we value their thoughts, insights and experiences. These things matter a great deal more to us than conventional wisdom or herd mentalities in technical communities -- always think for yourself and don't hold back!

You value simplicity. Blaise Pascal once wrote, "I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." Making things simple and elegant is deceptively difficult, but it’s worth the effort because the result is easier to understand and work with.

We work hard to ensure Wistia is an inclusive and diverse place where everyone feels productive, happy, fulfilled, respected, comfortable, and welcome. You can learn more about the type of company we’re building on our blog. Check out our jobs page to get a feel for our culture and the benefits of working at Wistia. We want you to grow, contribute, and have fun here! We know the biggest investment we can make is in our employees, so we provide:

A competitive salary

401k with 3% company contribution, regardless of whether you make contributions

Flexible hours

Fully paid healthcare coverage for you and your family (including dental) and a healthcare FSA

Up to 12 weeks paid family leave

Flexible vacation and sick leave

Transportation subsidies

A convenient office just south of Central Square in Cambridge, MA. We're right on the Red Line, surrounded by great restaurants, parks, and even a dog park

If we sound exciting to you, please apply with some links (e.g. GitHub, Twitter) or attachments (e.g. non-public code, technical writings) that will help us understand your background.